Re: [powerpc] ftrace warning kernel/trace/ftrace.c:2068 with code-patching selftests

[Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 13:20, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 01:03:34PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 12:47, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > [adding LKML so this is easier for others to find]
> > >
> > > If anyone wants to follow the thread from the start, it's at:
> > >
> > >   https://lore.kernel.org/linuxppc-dev/944D10DA-8200-4BA9-8D0A-3BED9AA99F82@linux.ibm.com/
> > >
> > > Ard, I was under the impression that the 32-bit arm kernel was (virtually)
> > > relocatable, but I couldn't spot where, and suspect I'm mistaken. Do you know
> > > whether it currently does any boot-time dynamic relocation?
> >
> > No, it does not.
>
> Thanks for comfirming!
>
> So 32-bit arm should be able to opt into the build-time sort as-is.
>
> > > Steve asked for a bit more detail on IRC, so the below is an attempt to explain
> > > what's actually going on here.
> > >
> > > The short answer is that relocatable kernels (e.g. those with KASLR support)
> > > need to handle the kernel being loaded at (somewhat) arbitrary virtual
> > > addresses. Even where code can be position-independent, any pointers in the
> > > kernel image (e.g. the contents of the mcount_loc table) need to be updated to
> > > account for the specific VA the kernel was loaded at -- arch code does this
> > > early at boot time by applying dynamic (ELF) relocations.
> >
> > These architectures use place-relative extables for the same reason:
> > place relative references are resolved at build time rather than at
> > runtime during relocation, making a build time sort feasible.
> >
> > arch/alpha/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/arm64/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/ia64/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/parisc/include/asm/uaccess.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/powerpc/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/riscv/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/s390/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> > arch/x86/include/asm/extable.h:#define ARCH_HAS_RELATIVE_EXTABLE
> >
> > Note that the swap routine becomes something like the below, given
> > that the relative references need to be fixed up after the entry
> > changes place in the sorted list.
> >
> > static void swap_ex(void *a, void *b, int size)
> > {
> >         struct exception_table_entry *x = a, *y = b, tmp;
> >         int delta = b - a;
> >
> >         tmp = *x;
> >         x->insn = y->insn + delta;
> >         y->insn = tmp.insn - delta;
> >         ...
> > }
> >
> > As a bonus, the resulting footprint of the table in the image is
> > reduced by 8x, given that every 8 byte pointer has an accompanying 24
> > byte RELA record, so we go from 32 bytes to 4 bytes for every call to
> > __gnu_mcount_mc.
>
> Absolutely -- it'd be great if we could do that for the callsite locations; the
> difficulty is that the entries are generated by the compiler itself, so we'd
> either need some build/link time processing to convert each absolute 64-bit
> value to a relative 32-bit offset, or new compiler options to generate those as
> relative offsets from the outset.
>

Don't we use scripts/recordmcount.pl for that?